1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electrical connector blocks and particularly to insulation-piercing electrical connector blocks for flat ribbon cable. More particularly, the invention relates to insulation-piercing connector blocks including a guide block for guiding and spacing conductors in a cable and alternately terminating conductors in a cable as signal and ground terminations.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Insulation-piercing electrical connector blocks using bifurcated contacts or tines for forming electrical connections are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,012,219 and 3,820,058. The connector blocks in these patents include one or more rows of insulation piercing contacts for individual signal or common termination of individual conductors or a multi-conductor ribbon cable. Also, a number of connector blocks are known in the prior art for common or ground termination of alternate drain conductors or a ground plane in a multi-conductor flat ribbon cable. Such connector blocks are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,634,806; 3,731,251; 3,864,011; and 3,912,354.
Individually shielded and multi-conductor cables with a ground plane provide advantages over unshielded multi-conductor cable by reducing spurrious electrical noise and cross-talk between adjacent conductors, however such cables are expensive and termination of the signal and ground conductors or ground plane is complicated. An alternative to such expensive cables can be provided by using conventional unshielded multi-conductor cable and commonly terminating alternate conductors in the cable to reduce spurious electrical noise and cross-talk between alternate signal conductors in a cable.
The connector block of the present invention provides for rapid common termination of alternate conductors as ground and signal conductors and substantially reduces spurious electrical noise and cross-talk between signal conductors in an unshielded multi-conductor cable.